Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 127

On Research, Part Two

I got an e-mail a few weeks ago from Jeff Wills, who is writing an historical novel and was curious about how I did research. I promised I would answer in this space as soon as the launch of The Profession was over. So … here goes:
JW: My question is about your method of research
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Hector and Andromache

Here is one of the most poignant and tragic scenes (at least in its outcome, foretold but unstated here) in all of epic poetry. From Homer's Iliad, in the Richmond Lattimore translation from the University of Chicago Press, this is the moment on the battlements of Troy, when the Trojans' great hero Hector has left
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Publication Day

I have a recurring dream. In the dream I'm invited to climb into the back seat of a limo that's about to drive off to someplace fabulous (sometimes the dream is about a fancy home or a fantastic restaurant). The dream always ends badly. It's trying to tell me something.
Publication day—which was yesterday for The
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The First Modern War

The Peloponnesian War was the clash between Athens and Sparta that lasted, as the oracle foretold, "thrice nine years," and ended in the defeat of Athens and the destruction of the Golden Age of her democracy. Students today run screaming when they're assigned to read Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. They shouldn't. It's a
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Join Us For A Night of Bassoon

Steve Martin opened his performance with Steep Canyon Rangers by thanking the audience for being there—saying that he knew asking us to join him for a night of bluegrass was like Jerry Seinfeld asking his fans to join him for a night of bassoon. It wasn't what any of us expected—or necessarily wanted—from him, and
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Crossing Over

First things first: our Kindle and Nook winners from last week's un-Contest. Congrats to Lou Sancio and Rachel Hope, who will get their new eReaders ASAP—and to the six other lucky devils listed below, who will each get a signed first edition of The Profession. Winners, I'll e-mail you all personally and we can confer
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Steven Press­field is a writer of two worlds

In one world, he's the cel­e­brated author of The War of Art—a book that has quickly become the field man­ual for any­one engaged in cre­ative or artis­tic work of any kind, espe­cially entre­pre­neurs and writ­ers. In the other world he's the king of all mil­i­tary epics and his­tor­i­cal sagas — a think­ing man's Tom Clancy
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"We Are Going to War"

The following is from "Israel Journal: June, 1967," a brilliant first-person account of the Sinai battles of the Six Day War by Yael Dayan, the daughter to Moshe Dayan and an accomplished journalist and novelist in her own right (as well as, later in her career, a member of the Israeli Knesset and Deputy Mayor
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Do Book Videos Work?

I can't think about William Blake's "The Lamb" without thinking about Shelby's and Jonathan's impressions of Foghorn Leghorn reading the poem:
"Ah… Little Lamb. Ah, say… Ah, Little Lamb. Dost thou know… I, say, I say, dost thou know who made thee?
We were seniors in Ms. Wilmers' high school English class and she had just finished
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A Kindle and Nook Un-Contest

Two weeks from today, The Profession goes on sale. We were thinking about having a contest with prizes to celebrate, but we decided that was much too complicated. So instead we're giving away stuff without a contest.
The two grand prizes—attorneys, take note: they're not really "prizes"—are a Nook (WiFi) and a Kindle (WiFi), both to be loaded with the
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